Here Are The Best Horror Games To Wrap Up Spooky Season

With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, it’s the perfect time to boot a horror game you can easily knock out over the weekend. Here are some recommendations!

Almost Every Resident Evil Game 

When it comes to spooky season, you can’t go wrong with booting up a Resident Evil game. This has been gaming’s marquee horror franchise for a reason: it generally delivers. Personally, I’ve spent the last week finally digging into the remake of Resident Evil 4, and let me tell ya, I’m having a blast. Resident Evil 4 is one of my all-time favorite games. I’ve played it on the PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, PS4, and now PS5. It’s wild how well the remake recaptures the essence of the OG while modernizing the gameplay. 

The remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 go on sale quite frequently on most digital storefronts; Resident Evil: Village is available for free on PlayStation’s game catalog, and I would also highly recommend Resident Evil VII: Biohazard. A new entry in the series, Resident Evil: Requiem, was released earlier this year and is also on sale right now. Most of the games are fairly short too, so you can easily knock them out over a weekend. 

No matter what Resident Evil game you choose, you’re going to have a good time. 

Except Resident Evil 6. We, uh, we don’t talk about that one. 

Alien: Isolation 

Alien: Isolation is one of the best licensed games ever made, and arguably the best usage of the Alien license this century until Alien: Earth released last year. Alien: Isolation follows Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, as she goes to a space station that has the black box from the Nostromo, the ship her mother first faced the xenomorph. This inevitably puts her on a collision course with the titular alien and a litany of other threats. 

Alien is one of my all-time favorite movies, horror or otherwise, and Isolation perfectly presents the xenomorph as the ultimate biological weapon. You can’t beat the xenomorph; you can only try your best to outwit it. This makes Isolation both a difficult game to beat and terrifying because every time you see the xenomorph, you know that your only option is to run and hope it doesn’t catch you. 

With a sequel on the way next year, now is the perfect time to give Alien: Isolation a look if you’ve never played it. 

Doki Doki Literature Club 

If you want something low-key but incredibly disturbing, Doki Doki Literature Club is the game for you! Doki Doki Literature Club starts as a fairly standard visual novel, where you play as a young man who joins a literature club at the request of his friend, Sayori. For the first hour or so, it plays like a sweet, silly visual novel.

And then something awful happens.

The game suddenly evolves into a deeply unsettling psychological horror game. I played this game when it originally dropped in 2017, and it has stuck with me since. It’s only four hours, so you can beat it in one sitting, which you likely will because once the shift happens, it’s hard not to see the game through to its end. Both a fascinating deconstruction of visual novels, as well as a unique blend of cosmic, psychological, and analog horror, Doki Doki Literature is one of the best bad times you can have in gaming. 

Until Dawn 

Until Dawn is one of the best horror-adventure games to ever do the damn thing. It takes the tropes of a slasher movie and evolves them into a fun and thrilling choose-your-own-adventure where every character can live or die. The choose-your-own-adventure aspect makes this an incredibly replayable game, as there are several different endings and story paths to go down.

While technically a single-player game, Until Dawn also works as a fantastic party game. When it originally released in 2015, I had some friends over for a Halloween party. They were curious about the game, so we booted it up, and it wound up being a blast. We all voted on what decisions the characters would make, and it was a really cool shared experience. 

Whether you play by yourself or with a group of friends, Until Dawn is a fantastic way to spend a weekend. 

All of these games are currently on sale on the PlayStation Store, so you don’t even have to break the bank to play them. We are really living in one of the strongest eras for horror gaming, so take advantage and boot up something spooky this weekend! And remember, kids, just because Halloween is ending doesn’t mean you can’t keep the spooky vibes going. 

SEE ALSO:

Spooky Season Is The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

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